How green is St. Paul?

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman recently unveiled at Como Park the first city-owned, solar-powered electric car charging stations in Minnesota. The mayor believes the city has a role in moving cleaner industry into the future.

Coleman's appearance Thursday, April 12, was a prelude to his trip to Sweden and Germany this week, where he'll tout St. Paul's efforts to create a more environmentally sustainable city. Germany is a world leader in environmental policy and technology. The city of Vauban has gone virtually car-free by banning cars from parking on private property; houses in the city of Rieselfeld are known to generate more energy than they consume.

What chance does Coleman have of convincing them St. Paul measures up? City officials say there's a host of projects, some still in infancy, that give St. Paul bragging rights as a "green" city. Skeptics point to recent city council decisions to block a wind turbine from Metro State University and to remove a series of proposed traffic circles from a future bikeway as examples to the contrary.

With the city's Earth Day celebration scheduled for April 22 on Harriet Island, it's time to ask: How green is St. Paul?

PARKS AND RIVERFRONT

The city is evaluating a draft of the Great River Passage master plan, a 300-page document aimed at guiding development of the 17 miles of Mississippi River corridor in St. Paul. It addresses everything from parks to private industry to lake cleanup.

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"What's really wonderful is the way the city is looking at its riverfront," said Whitney Clark, executive director of the Friends of the Mississippi River. "They're very much seeing it as a public asset."

Nevertheless, his organization and other groups are picking apart the plan's specifics, such as a proposal to create a dog park and mountain bike trails over a capped toxic dump near the Ford plant.

St. Paul is one of 14 cities in Minnesota to win the organization's "Blue Star Award" for "leading-edge" stormwater management, Clark said.

ENERGY GENERATION

District Energy, a biomass facility begun in 1983 on Kellogg Boulevard, heats and cools about 80 percent of the buildings in downtown St. Paul, as well as 300 nearby single-family homes. The Capitol complex was the nation's first to be primarily heated and cooled with renewable resources.

"It eliminated 180 smokestacks from (downtown's) buildings," said Anne Hunt, the city's environmental policy director. About 70 percent of District Energy's energy comes from tree trimmings, making it the largest wood-fired combined heat-and-power plant in the nation to serve a district energy system.

Owned by a private firm, a hydropower plant that once provided electricity to a closed Ford factory still churns on the Mississippi River. And in 2008 and 2009, Xcel Energy converted its power plants in St. Paul and Minneapolis from coal-powered to natural gas, increasing output while decreasing emissions.

"It was an improvement on the old coal-powered plant," said Rhoda Gilman, a spokeswoman for the Green Party of St. Paul. "Of course, natural gas isn't an ultimate solution, either. It's possibly a bridge."

ELECTRIC CARS

Using federal stimulus money, the city has invested in 18 stations at six city-owned parking ramps and Como Park. City officials are crossing their fingers that creating the infrastructure will pave the way for private industry to sell more plug-in cars. Some critics fear those efforts will go the way of the Segway, a personal transportation device that most folks now view as a novelty.

Hunt says otherwise. "Electric cars are going to follow a similar trajectory as hybrid cars, so they'll be gaining market share annually."

The city owns two electric Ford Transit Connects and two Chevy Volts.

Nonprofits also are making inroads. Based on Selby Avenue, the Neighborhood Energy Connection's "HourCar" program offers memberships in hour-to-hour car-sharing arrangements, leasing 35 vehicles in Minneapolis and St. Paul for quick trips. Macalester College maintains the largest HourCar fleet in the Twin Cities, with two Honda Fits, a Toyota Prius and a Ford Ranger pickup truck.

WIND TURBINES

About a decade ago, Macalester College unveiled a 100-foot-tall wind turbine on campus as a teaching tool. Since then, there has been little movement to harness the wind within St. Paul, in part because of public concern about noise, safety and aesthetics, especially in residential and historic districts.

Metro State University had proposed a 120-foot wind turbine on East Seventh Street in Dayton's Bluff. The plan made it through the St. Paul Planning Commission but withered under criticism from neighbors and the St. Paul City Council about a week ago.

Council President Kathy Lantry noted city zoning codes are silent on wind turbines, and the Planning Commission is still in the midst of a two-year zoning study.

At least one entrepreneur is thinking outside the box. Last December, Tony Magnotta began drawing energy from three vertical-axis wind turbines on top of his Minnesota Abstract and Title building at 1010 N. Dale St., as well as a fourth turbine in his parking lot. The rooftop turbines are about 18 feet tall and turn in place like barber poles, capturing the wind from any direction.

"We switched from natural gas to electric heat. We're saving hundreds to $1,000 a month," said Magnotta, who is in discussions with a Taiwanese firm to manufacture more.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

St. Paul officials say they're saving $235,000 annually, avoiding having to build power plants and setting an example for private industry. Their strategy has been to add new energy-efficient lighting and other "retrofits" to 28 buildings to make them consume less power. The structures include 10 parking ramps.

With similar goals in mind, the city and the St. Paul Port Authority helped J and J Distributing on Rice Street access a $1.3 million low-interest loan for a major overhaul of the company's heating, air conditioning and ventilation system.

In 2011, St. Paul City Hall and about 85 additional Twin Cities buildings participated in Xcel Energy's yearlong energy-efficiency effort, which included St. Paul structures such as Lawson Commons and the League of Minnesota Cities building. The contest saved 13 million kilowatt hours, enough energy to power 1,100 homes for a year.

SOLAR POWER

Last year District Energy and St. Paul unveiled the largest solar-thermal installation in the Midwest on top of the RiverCentre, which now effectively heats itself. Rows of photovoltaic solar panels also are situated on the side of the RiverCentre parking ramp, on top of the Rondo Library, the Western District Police Station and other sites. Hunt hopes to have eight city structures capturing solar energy before the end of the year.

Ralph Jacobson, president of the Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association and St. Paul-based Innovative Power Systems, Inc., said the solar energy movement is learning from past mistakes, such as trying to heat a home with solar power.

"In the winter, when we really need it, it's a very weak resource. In the summer, when we don't need it, it's a very strong resource," he said.

ALTERNATIVE TRANSIT

Working with Transit for Livable Communities to tap federal funding, Emily Erickson, the city's sustainable-transportation planner, has been shepherding plans for new bikeways that allow cyclists to travel east-west or north-south over railroad tracks and highways with minimal stops.

After months of pushback from homeowners, the final plans for the Jefferson Avenue bikeway include three traffic circles, instead of the five previously proposed, and the controversial "traffic diverter" at Cleveland Avenue is no longer part of the plan.

Plans for other transit alternatives abound. Metro Transit is studying possible new "rapid bus" routes in St. Paul, while the Metropolitan Council is overseeing the state's second light-rail transit line set to debut in downtown St. Paul in 2014. City officials and Transit for Livable Communities are looking into a possible streetcar line to feed into the Central Corridor light rail.